Students explore teaching careers in academy

It's signing day for future teachers at a recent meeting at the St. Johns County School Board. Taking part in the ceremony for students from St. Johns County Academy of Future Teachers at St. Augustine High School are, from left, Beth McCartt, Jordan Lee, Alana Hayes, teacher Daryl Cullipher, teacher Katie Maltby and Dionne Blount. Students who do come to work with the district after getting their college degree come in at a higher step pay grade.

St. Johns County School Board members paused a recent meeting to watch 11 St. Augustine High School students sign letters of intent.

No athletes were involved, only local kids who want to come back and teach someday in their home county. It’s part of a teaching/recruitment program the district has called “growing our own.”

Each student started at the St. Johns County Academy of Future Teachers at SAHS. The program recently earned model academy status, the highest designation awarded by the National Career Academy Coalition.

The academy gives students a chance to discover before they head off to college if teaching is the career they really want.

“We would rather they learn now than have they and their parents spend thousands of dollars and (the student) change their major three times,” said Daryl Cullipher, who has been with the academy since it began in 2007. She and Katie Maltby work with students in the program.

Cullipher estimated about 85 percent of the students who enroll leave discovering they love teaching and 15 percent say they “never want to teach in their lives.”

“I think education is very similar to other professions … You have to learn if you like it,” Cullipher said. She knows what she’s talking about. Before teaching she had other jobs including working as a recruiter. “I absolutely hated it. Human resources wasn’t for me.”

She’s also a SAHS legacy, her parents both went to the school and her grandfather graduated from former Ketterlinus High School.

Through the academy students get to learn while in high school if teaching is the path for them and they do it, in part, by going into the classroom to present after learning techniques and setting up lesson plans in academy classes.

Crookshank Elementary School was the first place academy students went and now The Webster School sees the students. The first program the freshmen take to the classroom is “Read for the Record,” a national effort to encourage reading. They go in with lessons planned. Then they meet reality.

“They’ve never been in front of a class. Quite literally it’s a virgin voyage. Some come out psyched, super pumped and some come to you and say, ‘How do you do it?’”

Word of mouth and publicity helped the academy to grow. Some students come in with no intention of teaching; they’re more interested in business and want to learn presentation skills and 21st century technology, both part of the Academy of Future Teachers. The best thing for many is the leadership and motivational skills they take away from the program.

“What I tell kids is to go with your passion. Education is something you can get into but you’ve got to want it,” Cullipher said. “It’s not the type of job where you show up every day and fake it. You’ve got to love it. You got to have enthusiasm, passion and love kids. … A lot of people I work with do have that passion and do love it.”